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From #proabortion to #prolife: My thoughts on #RoeAt40

First, I’d like to say that I hate that the anniversary of this decison, which gave women the ‘right’ to terminate their pregnancy(ies), is on my birthday.

Second, abortion is an issue I find hard to talk about – not because I’m afraid to talk about it (I got over that long ago) but because it is an incredibly painful issue for me to discuss. Not that I’m alone in that; I’m sure it’s tough for a lot of people, mainly male and female pro-lifers, to discuss because of the moral issues, the visual images we’ve all seen of aborted babies, and the deep emotional commitment pro-lifers have towards saving the lives of the unborn. The pain for me is that, but also the knowledge that as a young woman finding my way in life, I once advocated the ‘continued right’ for pregnant women to abort their unborn babies. There are fiercely strong elements of both guilt and shame inside me over my old beliefs about abortion, so strong that I can’t write or talk about the issue without being overcome with emotion. I simply cannot forgive myself that I, in my own small way, contributed to the culture of death at one point in my life. It is something I continue to have to work through, not just as a Christian, but as a human being, because you don’t have to be a Christian to understand that abortion is morally reprehensible.

On the other hand, having been on the ‘other side’ of the issue at one time helps me, I think, in being able to give a more understandable and (hopefully) believable insight into the mind of someone who is (in my case once was) pro-abortion, but before I get started, I’d like to acknowledge that I realize that reasonable people can disagree on this issue, but the people I most often debate the issue with are those who are militant and unreasonable, and who make easily debunkable arguments, which I’ll explain in depth below.

The word “abortion” alone speaks volumes about the procedure, and you can best believe that over the years pro-abortion forces in groups such as NARAL and NOW have sought to reframe the debate by preferring to use the term “pro-choice” more and more rather than “pro-abortion” (Example 1 and Example 2). There is a reason for this, which is evident when you analyze the word “abortion” itself. The word “abort” means to “stop” or “terminate” something and in the case of “abortion” what exactly are we “stopping” or ‘terminating”? Pro-abortionists don’t want you to consider this aspect of the argument because they’d have to admit that you were “stopping” or “terminating” the very maturation of a little life – a human life – where we all began. Thus the attempt at reframing the debate by claiming they are ‘pro-choice’ (or ‘pro reproductive freedom’) rather than ‘pro-abortion.’ They want you to believe it’s not about a ‘aborting a life’ but instead ‘making a choice.’ Right.

The attempt at reshaping the debate by using less inflammatory words is a common tactic of the pro-abortion crowd. Oftentimes when debating abortion I’ll come across a staunch abortion advocate who will insist that it’s not a baby in a pregnant woman’s womb but a “blob of tissue” or “parasite” or “leech.” I wrote this last October regarding the changing of terms we use when discussing unborn babies or humans in a PVS, and I think it’s worth repeating today:

Viewing unborn children as a parasites is very similar to viewing patients in a persistent vegetative state as a vegetables. It’s a way to take the human aspect of the issue out of the equation. When you don’t view something as a human, it’s easier to justify your support of taking its life. Dr. Yacov Tabak, who helped provide the best care for his wife Marsi, who was diagnosed as being in a PVS in 1997, explains:

Dr. Tabak couldn’t bear the term “vegetable” when it was first presented to him, and since the Terri Schiavo ruling, says that some in the medical community have shown an ulterior, ugly side regarding this appellation. “There is a medical agenda with this term” Dr. Tabak contends. “It’s very difficult to get emotionally involved with a vegetable. To have a relationship with a carrot goes against human nature.

And to have a relationship with a â€˜parasite’ goes against human nature, too. Viewing an unborn child as a mere pesky parasite makes it sound, to pro-abortionists, so much more â€˜justifiable’ to terminate.

There are conflicting studies out there which show on one hand that ‘most’ women who have abortions are not emotionally scarred by it and feel relieved once it’s done, while others show that having an abortion scars a woman for life, some more so than others. The truth is somewhere in between, but make no mistake about it, the decision to have an abortion is not one that most women make in a snap. They think about it and agonize over it, and there’s a reason they agonize over it: because deep inside, they know it’s wrong. Last October, I blogged about a hospital in the UK that was discovered to have thrown aborted babies into the same incinerator they used to get rid of trash, which outraged not only pro-life groups, but some of the women who had abortions there, who thought it was a horrible way for their baby to be dispensed with, which tells you about how torn women who have abortions are between doing what’s right (keeping the child) versus doing what is convenient (aborting them) and the guilt which eats at them later. Women are reassured prior to the abortion that their unborn child will be buried or dispensed of ‘with dignity’ but why worry about the dignity of the child when you didn’t want it to begin with? If you’ve made the choice to abort your child, you have little room to complain when you find out how it’s been disposed of, but all the same the thought that women could be horrified to find out something like that happened to their unborn baby after they aborted it shows that they know deep down that what they did was wrong to begin with.

The hypocrisy involved in pro-abortion arguments is so obvious that it amazes me that pro-abortionists can make them with a straight face, but make them they do and they’ve gotten away with it for years. For example, you frequently hear and read pro-abortionists exclaim “the government has no business in my sex life” yet these same people advocate that the government does get involved in your sex life, especially if you’re poor and don’t have the money to get an abortion. Then they’re ok with the government getting involved in your sex life – specifically involved in your choosing to terminate the result of your irresponsible sexual behavior via a state-funded abortion. Never ever let a pro-abortionist convince you that they don’t want the government involved in your sex life – they most certainly do. If they didn’t want government involved in your sex life, then they wouldn’t support continued state-funded abortions, and they wouldn’t advocate government-approved sex education in the public school system. When pro-abortionists say they don’t want the government involved in your sex life, what they’re really saying is they don’t want the government telling you that if you choose to be sexually irresponsible with your body, that there can be serious consequences for your behavior. What they want the government to do is to essentially condone your behavior by paying for your abortion, or paying for your child to be able to eat and have a roof over his head.

Another hypocritical position pro-abortionists take is the one where they claim to promote ‘responsible sexual behavior’ which would be laughable if the issue itself wasn’t so serious. How on earth can you claim to promote ‘responsible sexual behavior’ when you encourage women to feel free to engage in sex with whoever whenever? Whether they are protected from disease and pregnancy or not, it is not – I repeat – not responsible to routinely engage in casual sex, whether you are a man or a woman. Respect for your body comes not in seeing how many people you can share it with, but saving it for the person with whom you intend to share your life. That is the real way to engage in ‘responsible sexual behavior’, not giving in to your every sexual urge with everyone you’re attracted to. Not only that, but with each new partner, you increase your chances of getting an STD, and/or either getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant, and as a result may have to rely on the government to either pay for your abortion, your child, and/or your healthcare. How is that ‘responsible’? You simply do not promote sexual responsibility by giving the green light to engage in frequent casual sex. Taking disease and pregnancy out of the equation does not make frequent casual sex any more responsible. Furthermore, pro-abortionists in feminist groups like NARAL and NOW betray their ‘responsiblity’ argument by routinely blaming the man for everything that happened. Check out some of these bumper stickers on the NOW website:

Against Abortion? Wear a Condom, Dude! $2.00

[…]

Against Abortion? Have a Vasectomy! $2.00

[…]

Not Every Sperm Needs a Name $2.00

These hypocrites also have the nerve to claim that they are pro-family! I don’t think I have to explain the absurdity of such an argument.

Also, you’ll find that most staunch pro-abortionists are the same people who will chain themselves to a tree in order to protect it or launch a campaign to ‘save the whales’ – it’s bizarre that they put more importance on life that is not human than life which is.

Probably the biggest logical fallacy involved in pro-abortion arguments is that the baby growing inside a woman’s body is supposedly not yet human because it couldn’t sustain life outside of the womb. I find it beyond comprehension that one pregnant woman’s 2 week old child is another woman’s 2 week old ‘blob of tissue.’ I find it even more incomprehensible that women who have had children can remain ‘pro-choice’, considering they’re not ignorant about when their son or daugther’s life started. It’s either a child or it’s not. In actuality, we really don’t get to decide: once that child is conceived that’s what it is: a child. Why there is a debate about this is beyond me, because every single one of us, whether on the pro-life side or pro-abortion side, started off as a ‘blob of tissue.’ Thank goodness that our mothers didn’t view at us the way pro-abortionists look at pregnancy today, eh? A question pro-abortionists are reluctant to answer is: “In retrospect, would you have been in favor of your mother aborting you or your brother or sister when you or they were just ‘blobs of tissue’ if she had wanted to?” It’s easy for them to be pro-abortion when they don’t have to consider the possibility that they or one of their beloved family members could have been aborted at their mother’s ‘choosing.’

President Reagan once famously said: “I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.” Timely then, and timely now.

My hope is that anyone who reads this and who considers themselves pro-abortion will revisit and reconsider why they believe in the â€˜right’ to abort a child. I know people can change their views on abortion: I certainly did, and I don’t regret it for a minute. There is a lot of hypocrisy and senselessness involved in pro-abortion arguments. I know, because I used to make them.

More: Let’s take a look at a typical method of abortion, known as the D&E abortion, as described by Planned Parenthood Golden Gate. This is what they describe as the ‘safest’ method of abortion and they perform them on unborn babies up to 18.6 weeks gestation (emphasis added):

You return to clinic on the day of your procedure. Before the procedure is started, a needle will be inserted in your vein and will stay there during the time you are in the clinic. Once the needle is in place, all the medications that you need will be given through it. These medications may include drugs to help you relax and reduce discomfort.

If used, the gauze and dilators will be removed. The doctor will give you a local anesthetic (numbing medicine) in your cervix, which will make the procedure more comfortable. The opening of the uterus may need to be stretched more, which will be done gradually with a series of narrow instruments called dilators, each a little larger than the one before. When the cervix is open wide enough, a plastic tube will be inserted into the uterus and is connected to a suction machine. The content of the uterus will then be removed by a combination of suction and instruments, usually taking 5-15 minutes. During and after the procedure, you may feel cramping as the uterus shrinks down to its normal size. The doctor then may do a final check with a spoon shaped instrument called a curette. Later, the doctor will examine the pregnancy tissue to check whether it has been removed completely.

Isn’t it sick the way they describe what’s in the uterus as the “contents” of the uterus or “pregnancy tissue”, rather than a fetus? This is what a fetus at 18 weeks gestation looks like (more here). Some “blob of tissue”!

It is a trademark of the fractured and schizophrenic thought patterns of the left that they occasion the slaughter of thousands under the constitutional imprimatur of Roe v. Wade using cheesy and tasteless TV ads to emphasize the “anniversary” of it on the one hand while, at the same time, seeking to strip the Second Amendment Constitutional liberties of responsible gun owners in the name of public safety.

I simply cannot forgive myself that I, in my own small way, contributed to the culture of death at one point in my life.

ST, it does you no good at all to beat yourself up over your old beliefs. You’ve seen the light, and that’s what’s important. No sense spending your life looking in the rear view mirror when you have so much good to accomplish on the road ahead of you!

My thoughts exactly…many of us have actually been through the brutal practice and have turned away from it now that we have come to know the truth. It’s a turning away from self really. And when God forgives, He forgives completely—as far as the east is from the west. We can live on to proclaim the truth that once fertilization is complete there is the complete essence of a human being present. Period.

ST, thank you for sharing your heart-felt opinion. I agree 100% with you. My maternal grandmother died from having an abortion so I was denied the opportunity of knowing her. This was around 1935 so you know it was “back alley”. No one talked about her nor are there any photos of her. I understand her motivation: she was married to a drunk and her youngest child was 10. Still, she and her unborn child died. I always know a person’s viewpoint on abortion just by the name they give the unborn child. If he/she says “fetus”, I am betting they are “pro-choice”. What is so nuts about our culture of death are the arguments for “life” in other instances. A person kills a pregnant woman and is thus charged for a double homicide. How can that be? They want it both ways and it just doesn’t work. It is illogical and really I don’t get it. On top of all of the above, here we have this raging gun control debate at present “to save the life of one child”. Yet every 94 seconds a child is killed by its mother. Again, I don’t get it. Thanks for letting me ramble here. :(